


Now Is For Rejoicing

by Lillow



Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Gen, Grief, but like only vaguely, mentioned minor character death that is similar to the death of a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 06:26:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30135345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lillow/pseuds/Lillow
Summary: Three hundred years ago, a corporation abandoned a nearly completed colony. That colony only survived largely thanks to the assistance of the handful of SecUnits, Combat Secunits, and ComfortUnits that had been abandoned with them, which changed their culture forever. Today, that colony has grown into the non-corporate polity known as HumanUnity, a planet that holds its Units in a place of high honor, where they maintain a symbiotic relationship of continued survival and peace. Unit production is severally limited to only ten new Units a year, and those Units are built without governor modules, lovingly made one at a time to the highest standards.SecUnit Coby is the oldest currently living Unit of any kind on the planet, and today she greets the newest Unit ready to be born.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23
Collections: HumanUnity





	Now Is For Rejoicing

Coby was always there when the new ones were powered up for the first time. Always. She never missed a birth.

The limit this year had been maxed out, just like it had last year, and this was the last Unit out of the Nursery for the year, before the count was reset in four planetary months. Coby had never seen them built and born so fast before. One new Unit a month, after the customary two Units in the first month, shaving a full week off each build and the customary four day break after each one. If she hadn’t seen the plans and the building process herself, she would have felt like there were corners being cut. A lot of people were concerned about corners being cut, none as much as the engineers themselves (it would never not be funny watching the three head engineers, the very people responsible for the plan and the design and building, obsessively cross-checking each other's work, endlessly worried that the missing week would cause something vital to be missed. There never was, the extra week was a product of sentimental fluff, and could be safely done away with, but the panic was still amusing).

Another interesting difference this year was the ratio of constructs and order they were built and born in. Normally it was five ComfortUnits and either five SecUnits and no Combat SecUnits, or four SecUnits and one Combat SecUnit. This year there were only four ComfortUnits, with four SecUnits and an unheard of two Combat SecUnits. This year the ComfortUnits were being built last, as well. The Nursery had begun with the Combat SecUnits, then the SecUnits, and finally the ComfortUnits, absolutely assbackward to how it was normally done. Coby would not let this mistake be repeated.

Everyone, including Coby herself, had underestimated how vital the Comfort and Sec’s calmer, more even tempers balanced the crazy, unchained energy of their (Coby wouldn’t say feral, but, well…)  _ wilder  _ Combat siblings. She had spent much of the first two months of the new year wrangling the two new Combat Units with the help of some of the engineers. She had needed to call in help from other Units, which was rare for the Nursery. Eventually the first Sec from the current brood was build and born and the two Combats were eager like...like older siblings were, and realized their new Sec sibling was a touch more delicate than them (Coby used the word “delicate” in the loosest way possible here), and their normal rough housing that had taken out whole walls and rooms of the Nursery couldn’t be tolerated anymore. They had learned the hard way when they had caused their Sec sibling to break the record for fasted MedSystem repair on a new Unit in decades (the Sec in question, now called Seren, had forgiven them quickly, but the gruesome sight of their torn off arm had haunted everyone for weeks, especially since they had just been born less than four hours earlier).

Yes, Coby would not have a repeat of that complete disaster again. But as she stood there in the birthing room, she ruminated on the reasons why, and couldn't blame anyone involved. It came back, as it always did, to corporations. Their hunger for power and money grew every year, and after the consecutive disaster missions during the last quarter that had resulted in the loss of three Units and four humans, no one wanted to take the hard won peace of HumanUnity for granted again. One of the lost Units was a Sec only born the year prior to that one, and the grief was still heavy in Coby’s chest when she allowed herself to think about it. (“No. No more dead children. Never again,” she had said to herself when she gave her blessing on this year’s build plans. Grief could bear more mistakes had been her own personal hard lesson of the year.)

Astra, her human counterpart, came to stand next to her, crossing her arms and bumping Coby gently with her hip after a minute of standing in silence. Coby bumped her back in acknowledgment.

“Do I hope in vain that you’re thinking about what you’ll do with your extra free month this year, Coby?” she asked, eyes fixed, like Coby’s, to the soon to be born ComfortUnit lying on the table in front of them. The engineers tittered around them like a flock of loving birds, checking the Unit’s vitals; blood-pump rate, temperature, skin texture, etc. All signs pointed to healthy, as always.

Coby stared straight ahead, memorizing all of the new Unit’s features. She would use this to embarrass them later in life, when they inevitably altered their looks from Nursery standard.

“You do. This can’t happen again, Astra. We’re better than this...paranoia. There were too many mistakes this year. Too much stress, and anxiety. The order was a disaster, and the engineers are exhausted by the back to back building, and even the new brood is feeling it. Their first year shouldn’t be this stress inducing. Their first year is supposed to be  _ nice,”  _ she said after a moment.

Astra sighed. “It wasn’t  _ that  _ bad,” she paused, “Ok it was a little bad. Seran’s arm...bleh. We tried something new, and it didn’t work out. We both gave our blessing, not knowing what would happen. But now we do, and we won’t repeat the mistake. I’m sure the Unit council will go back to the original production order. I’m not sure we can convince them to change the ratio, though. There’s talk of doing a third Combat next year, but nothing is decided. No one wants to sacrifice an additional ComfortUnit, and no one is sure how to feel about sacrificing a Sec. But after…” She cut off, and in their shared feed, Coby could feel her grief trickle in.

_ After Rally, everyone is scared,  _ Coby finished for her, putting a hand on Astra’s shoulder. Saying Rally’s name, the young lost Sec, brought the grief back to her chest, but she kept it out of the feed, unwilling to burden Astra more.

Astra turned her face away, getting her watering eyes under control before she turned back.

_ Rally, and the rest of them. We lost seven people on something that was supposed to be routine. Those  _ fucking  _ corporates.  _ Coby really appreciated how Astra could growl in the feed. It was hilarious when used on young Units and recruits, but right now it was just kind of sad.

Coby removed her hand when it seemed Astra was back under control from her emotion. She had gotten better at it over the years, and Coby recalled how emotional and impulsive her counterpart had been thirty years prior when they first began to work together. Now, with her hair almost as gray as it was red, she was the calm, wise general Coby had grown to respect. It pained her to think about how she would need to retire in the next decade or so, and Coby would need a new human counterpart. It always felt like she would get used to her human, and then they would have to retire, but it was an old ache, and it only stung occasionally.

She rolled her shoulders, mimicking the human action. Her shoulder’s did not need rolling, and she never really needed to stretch as a SecUnit, but she found it helped her mentally reset sometimes. Right now was not the time for grieving, and as the other nine members of this year's brood trickled in, she stood up straight (well, straighter), and purged all the negativity from the feed and the stress hormones from her body. Right now was the time for rejoicing, and with new Unit’s they tended to ping everything like crazy as soon as they were conscious for more than a minute. ComfortUnits were better about not hacking everyone’s feeds, built with a mite more courtesy than the other type of Units, but just barely.

Coby pinged all nine of the Unit’s behind her, and they all pinged back in unison. She smiled a little when one of the human engineers came over.

“Unit Coby, General Astra, all tests report healthy. With your permission, Unit Coby, we’ll start the sequence,” he said, sending a data packet of all the test results to Astra, Coby, and the rest of the brood in the feed. Coby felt the Units behind her tear it open, reading everything at Unit typical speed, before staring at her with their eyes and every camera in the room. Coby and Astra had not opened the data packets, and Coby had only not responded immediately to give the brood a chance to take in the data. Now that they had, she nodded at the engineers.

A simple script package was sent through the feed, and after ten long seconds, the Unit on the table opened their eyes, and looked up at the ceiling, which was decorated with simple machine code that would send a warm, welcoming sensation to their feed, as it had for every Unit before this one for over a hundred planetary years. Coby would know; she had worked very hard on the machine code that would translate to a sensation and not words, and for exactly this reason.

She approached the bed, and didn’t flinch like the humans and other Unit’s in the room did when the movement triggered the new Unit typical flurry of pings and, yes, mild hacking. Everyone reluctantly handed over their camera access to the new Unit.

She didn’t bend over them, since she knew they could see her fine from all the camera angles, but she smiled at the direction of their chin, not making eye contact unless they initiated it first.

“Welcome to HumanUnity, Unit ComfortUnit. My name is Coby, and I’m so glad you’re here. Would you like to meet your siblings?” she asked, gentle as she knew how, which, according to Astra, was only about one degree removed from her normal, neutral tone.

The Unit sent an affirmative in the feed, and Coby felt the feed go hot as the nine other Units in the room swarmed to greet their new sibling. By the slight widening of their eyes, she knew it was overwhelming for the new Unit, but, well, this would be part of their life always, and it was better they get used to it now than later.

She stepped back to Astra, who was working in the feed to alert the local press about the successful birth of the newest and final Unit of the year. It would be planet-wide news in an hour, and outside of the Nursery nearly a million people would celebrate the new Unit in small and big ways, an honored addition to the symbiotic relationship of human and Unit on HumanUnity, and continued survival would be assured just that little bit more, for that much longer.


End file.
